1:55 pm

Fri October 25, 2013

Cool winds are bringing relief to nearly 10 million residents of the northern Chinese city of Harbin, where thick smog caused schools, airports and businesses to shutter their doors earlier this week. Residents were ordered to remain indoors. At the pollution’s worst, visibility was only 65 feet.

The smog coincided with the first day residents fired up their heating systems in a city known for its cold temperatures and ice festivals.

NPR Story

1:33 pm

Wed October 23, 2013

The new Myspace is hoping the creative community will make the site their space.

Myspace was once the biggest social media network on the web, but with the emergence of social media sites like Facebook, Myspace lost its following when many of the casual users moved to the sleeker new social sites.

In 2011, Myspace was acquired from NewsCorp by singer and actor Justin Timberlake, along with brothers Tim and Chris Vanderhook, owners of the online advertising site Specific Media.

NPR Story

1:33 pm

Wed October 23, 2013

Tonight the Boston Red Sox take on the Saint Louis Cardinals at Fenway Park in Game 1 of the World Series.

Cardinals fans have adopted the 1985 Glenn Frey hit “The Heat is On” as their own. Here & Now takes a quick listen to a much-loved remix of the song, made especially to honor the Cardinals back in the 1980s.

One listener named Will wrote in saying that when he signed up, he didn’t appear to be eligible for a subsidy, even though he believes he is. There are also reports of individuals getting insurance cancellations notices due to the Affordable Care Act.

Julie Appleby of Kaiser Health News joins Here & Now’s Robin Young to sort through some of the questions.

New Jersey firefighter Capt. Bill Lavin is building 26 playgrounds for each of the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in communities that were hit hard by superstorm Sandy last year.

NPR Story

12:59 pm

Wed October 23, 2013

As of October 17th, around 2,400 people had signed up for health insurance within the state of Maryland. Those numbers pale in comparison with states like Kentucky, which had enrolled almost 11,000 by October 8th.

NPR Story

12:56 pm

Tue October 22, 2013

A flesh-eating narcotic known as “krokodil” has made its landing in the United States. The drug is injected, leaving the skin with gangrenous wounds and scaly, green flesh — hence the name “crocodile.”

The narcotic, usually created by mixing codeine with household ingredients like gasoline and iodine, emerged in Russia more than 10 years ago during a heroin shortage. Recent cases in the United States have been identified in Arizona, Illinois and Utah.

As he does every Monday, NPR Music writer and editor Stephen Thompson brings us a new song to kick off our week. This week it’s “This Lonely Morning” by Los Angeles rock duo Best Coast, off their new album “Fade Away.”

Thompson says Best Coast’s latest offering is a good follow up to its album that came out last year, “The Only Place.”

“It’s a really worthy sequel — full of irresistibly summery, beachy songs that are really sad if you scrape just slightly below the surface.”

Mickey Edwards represented Oklahoma’s 5th district for 16 years in Congress. Edwards says the dysfunction in Washington is a “systemic problem,” and can’t be cured until the power of political parties diminishes.

Edwards told Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson that the last impasse in Washington is a result of how the political parties, both the Democrats and the Republicans, operate.

NPR Story

2:59 pm

Thu October 17, 2013

Kyle Meredith, music director at WFPK public radio in Louisville, Kentucky, says that Louisville’s music scene, like the city, has always had an identity crisis — because Louisville is “not really the South, the East, the West or the North.”

NPR Story

2:43 pm

Tue October 15, 2013

William Swenson stands with a group of World War II veterans during a 10th Mountain Division ceremony at the WWII Memorial Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013 in Washington. On Tuesday, October 15. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

China’s largest e-commerce company recently announced it is going public in 2014, which means it will be the internet’s third largest company, and Amazon’s newest competitor.

Ali Baba’s edge is pricing — it’s able to keep prices super low because it has direct access to seller’s supply chains, which is exactly what Amazon is trying to do, by partnering with the giant like Proctor & Gamble.